The Constitution Day Lecture brings a distinguished speaker to the University of Maine School of Law annually to reflect on the significance of the U.S. Constitution.
2025 Constitution Day Lecture
The Constitution Day Lecture was presented on September 17, 2025 in the Moot Courtroom at 300 Fore Street, Portland.
Should Supreme Court justices be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate? Or should they, like most state judges, be elected by the people? On Constitution Day, Professors Dmitry Bam and Scott Bloomberg will debate the case for and against electing justices, weighing accountability, independence, and the practical guardrails that might make reform work.
Past Constitution Day Lectures
- 2024: Hon. James Tierney, “Originalism” – Is it a principled constitutional theory or simply a rationalization for turning back the clock.
- 2023: Senator Angus King Jr., U.S. Senate, “2023 Constitution Day Lecture“
- 2022: Jeannie Suk Gersen, John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, “2022 Constitution Day Lecture“
- 2021: Carrie Campbell Severino, Chief Counsel and Policy Director, Judicial Crisis Network & Professor Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School, “Role of the Supreme Court and the judicial selection process“
- 2020: Professor Pamela S. Karlan, Stanford Law, “Restoring Democracy“
- 2019: Interim Dean Dmitry Bam and Associate Professor Anthony Moffa, A debate on the merits of a potential new Constitutional Convention
- 2018: Professor Orlando Delogu, University of Maine School of Law, “The U.S. and Maine’s Constitution Both Indicate that Maine’s Beaches are Public Property”
- 2017: Professor Joseph Singer, Harvard Law School, “Indian Nations and the Constitution: What Americans Need to Know”
- 2016: Judge Kermit Lipez, U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, “The First Amendment, The Police, and the Digital Age”
- 2015: Judge John Woodcock, U.S District Court, District of Maine, “A Collision Course With Itself: The Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment”
- 2014: Judge Jon Levy, U.S District Court, District of Maine, “Smartphone Privacy: How Justice Louis Brandeis Foretold the Outcome of Riley v. California (2014), and Why it Matters”
- 2013: Professor Abbe Smith, Georgetown University Law Center, “How Can You Not Defend Those People”
- 2012: Professor Richard Fallon, Harvard Law School, “American Constitutionalism, Almost (But Not Quite) Version 2.0”
- 2011: Professor Margaret Burnham, Northeastern University School of Law, “Public Memory and the Civil Rights Era: Cold Cases, Truth Projects, Apologies and Monuments”
- 2010: Professor Jennifer Wriggins, University of Maine School of Law, “Constitutional Law and Tort Law: Injury, Race, and Equal Protection”
- 2009: Professor Melvyn Zarr, University of Maine School of Law, “The Supreme Court’s Long and Perhaps Unnecessary Struggle to Find a Standard of Culpability to Regulate the Federal Exclusionary Remedy for Fourth/Fourteenth Amendment Violations”
- 2007: Dean Harold Koh, Yale Law School, “Repairing Our Human Rights Reputation”